Of Cats and Conmen
by Gogol
Summary: It might have been Fate, but it was probably Fortune. Two old friends, fellows, and famous fraudsters meet in the Watch's cells. And if one of them is a pwetty wittle putty tat and the other a respected citizen, well, what of it? Everyone needs a day job.
1. The Beginning and the End

A/N: This will make no sense whatsoever unless you've read Going Postal, Making Money, and The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. You have been warned. Completely non-canon, by the way, and has TAMAHER set about twelve years before Making Money. Oh, and is it ironic or what that the week I predicted as being barren of fanficcyness was the one in which I wrote two?

And now, I am sort of proud to present...

**Of Cats and Conmen**

Once upon a time, in a prosperous town that had grown up around one of Uberwald's more well known rivers**(a), **a boy named Moist von Lipwig was planning to run away.

The reasons for this should already be obvious.

Moist was tired of being bullied about his name. Moist was tired of being congratulated on his name. Moist was tired of being experimentally prodded because of his name. Moist was tired, in short, of his name. But the thing about the prosperous town was that it was not a town populated by the sort of people who accepted things like nom de plumes. It was populated by the sort of people who took the news that he was assuming such a name fairly calmly, and then told their friends "That Moist boy wants us to call him Nomdeeploom**(c).**"

Moist like words, and he had not, as of yet, learned to like being laughed at. There is only so much mispronunciation that sort of person can take.

So he was running away. Because he spent too much time listening to stories, with the sort of skepticism mixed with badly-hidden enthusiasm that can only be achieved by fourteen year old boys, he was doing so with a long stick over his shoulder and a sack tied to one end, filled with the things he planned to take with him.

They included: a pack of marked cards, although he did not yet know how to play any card games that it would be possible to win money with, marked cards or no, false teeth, which were his grandfather's last bequest**(d)**, a pamphlet on dog breeding he had not yet realized was in there left from when his mother had used the sack, formerly a tablecloth, at the family's annual Doggy Luncheon, what money he had saved up**(e)**, a false moustache**(f), **and a sandwich.

It's amazing he survived his first day. Indeed, when more than a decade later he told a part of the story to his fiancee, she was extremely amazed by it. Insultingly so, really.

The truth was, he almost didn't. In another leg of the Trousers of Time, Moist von Lipwig was mugged (for what good that did the mugger) and had his throat slit by a wandering highway man with pent-up aggression caused by the fact that he had recently been held up in the middle of, er, a hold up by a bunch of rats who attacked certain private areas of a man that should never, ever be attacked. And in the third leg, which was the one the teenaged Moist in all three paths had really expected to end up in, he returned home within a few hours, tired and dusty and hot, and had his hide tanned for him by his father.

The reason he survived and went on down his winding road in this one, however, lies in the part of the story he omitted when discussing the matter with his fiancee.

It was a hot Grune day when he left. He strolled along the river, because it wasn't as if he had to worry about anyone catching up with him, and was just contemplating a break, barely half a mile from his home, when a voice behind him said "Hey, you! Stupid-looking kid! How would you like to be Lord Mayor - nah, kid, I'm down here..."

He turned around. When he looked down, he saw a cat.

Moist liked cats, in an indifferent sort of way. They were pleasant enough to look at, mostly, and they didn't bother him when he was daydreaming or Telling Stories, like dogs, and he always got the impression of lazy intelligence, an impression that was... oddly comforting.

This one was a slightly mangled looking tomcat, and this one positively oozed the aforementioned impression.

It struck him that there was no one there. "Who said that?" he said.

The cat _sighed. _"Look, stupid-looking kid," it said (or appeared to say), "we aren't getting nowhere like this."

"You _talked,_" said Moist, when he managed to stop gaping.

"Well done! Give the kid a bloody medal," the cat snapped.

"But - but - you're still talking," said Moist stupidly.

"We've gone over this already, haven't we? Yes. I can talk."

"Er," said Moist, and then, "How?"

The cat blinked. It - he, probably - gave him a suspicious look. "Hey, stupid-looking kid, you aren't as stupid as you look, are you?" It seemed to be accusing him of something.

Because he _wasn't _as stupid as he looked, and because something new and Hope-full was springing up inside of him, he said "Huh?"

The cat looked satisfied, and Moist knew he had said the right thing.

"Nothin', nothin'. So, like I said, want to be Lord Mayor?"

"Maybe," said the boy, cautiously. "I dunno, I've never been one before."

The cat suppressed a theatrically heavy sigh. "I guess that'll have to do. What's your name, kid?"

He opened his mouth to say Moist, and almost got out the first M before he realized what he was doing, panicked, and said the first name that came to mind, which was, unfortunately, his mother's.

"_Ethel?_" said the cat.

"Y-yes," he said, defensively, 'cos it wasn't as if he could go back on his unfortunate choice now. "Ethel. Right. Ethel Snake," he added, making the best of it. At the time, being fourteen, he thought Snake was a cool, dangerous sounding last name.

And Ethel? Well, it was better than Moist. Probably.

The cat made a motion that was presumably a shrug. "If you say so. I'm Maurice. Follow me, kid, and I'll make your dreams come true!"

Moist hesitated. He didn't trust dreams, or at least, he didn't think he trusted dreams, and he definitely didn't trust Maurice.

In the end, he followed the cat anyway.

**(a) i.e., the ones that the cartogrophers use to break up the MMBU(b).**

**(b) Miles and Miles of Bloody Uberwald. Incidentally, MMBU is one of the first acronyms ever to officially include an expletive.**

**(c) The reader may be interested to note that the kingdom of Lancre, home to That Agnes Who Calls Herself Perditax, is only five miles away from the town of Lipwig. **

**(d) The first line of said grandfather's will went, "I, Ludwig von Lupwig, being not very sound of body but really quite amazingly sound of mind, all things considered, although you don't get the things these days that you used to, eh, boy? Things are definitely going downhill..."**

**(e) In Ankh-Morpork dollars, it amounted to $3.89, which was, by coincidence, the exact price of half of one of Dibbler's sausages inna bun.**

**(f) At the time, he didn't know why. He just liked false moustaches. Later, he would come to see this as prophetic, and probably an omen from the gods. Probably an omen from Anoia, but, hey, none the less omen-y an omen for that.**

**---**

Twelve years later, Moist found himself to be completely and utterly drunk.

To be fair, though, he had a good reason for his inebriation. It was called 'ten bloody tons of bloody gold appearing in his bloody bank's bloody vault out of bloody nowhere.' Besides, he was sobering up quickly. The cold of the Watch's cells and the eerie blue glow that peeked out from under Igor's cell tended to have that effect on people.

There was a heavy, warm weight on his stomach.

This was because, he realized slowly, a very familiar cat was sitting on it.

"Uhm," he murmured, and closed his eyes in the hopes that the apparition would go away.

"Hi, _Ethel," _said Maurice. "You should have told me your real name! I had a job tracking you down, let me tell ya."

"Oh, no. No no no no no."

"Come on. Moist? Such a nice name! Look, kid, one of my oldest - er, acquaintances - was named Dangerous Beans. Moist ain't got nothing on Dangerous Beans."

"Please, oh merciciciciful god," moaned Moist, eyes snapping open again. "Gods, I mean. I want more beer," he added darkly. "If _yet another _old akwa-acqqqqqua-aqua-someone I know is going to come and try to blackmail me about my, my sor, shor, serr... wossname. Evil, anyhow. I want more beer. Past, that's it. Is there no justice in this world?"

"Nope," said Maurice, quite happily.

Moist concentrated, and marshalled his thoughts back into a straight line. "...the hells are you doing, here, that is, here... anyway?"

"Found you inna bar, Moisty boy," said the cat. "And I was so kind as to follow you when you got arrested for being Drunk and Disorderly - for shame, kid, couldn't you at least have worked up a proper crime to get locked up for? Honestly, I don't know why I bothered with you - just 'cos I wanted to talk about old times. Eh? Eh? What about that, eh?"

"It won't work," said Moist, more coherently. "I've already, reva, reva-eeeled my _secret identity_. Revealealeals, that's it, Reveveals Alter Ego Evil Criminal...ness. And they were all so shocked, yes they were, but they shtill trust me, right Maurice? Know all about that, doncha?"

Cats' faces are not designed for worry. Evolution, after all, knows when it is beaten. But Maurice was making the effort. There was genuine concern in those dark, soulful eyes, a certain twitch of the whiskers that suggested hesitant desire to ask after the health of everyone in the vicinity, and a kind of curious half-droop, half-cockedness to the ears that suggested that the owner was always ready to listen to the troubles of man or catkind. It was quite impressive, really.

"You mean you aren't going to give me money?"

Moist tried to glare at him, but his gaze kept getting bored and drifting off towards other things in the cell. What nice graffiti, he thought, lovely graffiti, that graffiti is my bestest friend in the whole wide world...

"I'll take that as a no, then," said the cat, sounding disappointed. "Well, I think I'll hang around a little. Just in case..."

"It's no good," said Moist, brightly, "the Watch knows about it already, and they can't do anything about it, 'cos, Lord Vetinarinari said so, 'n he's a tyrant, 'member?"

"...right," said Maurice. "When you put it that way..."

He was interrupted, however, by the door opening.

Commander Vimes didn't look angry. Moist could tell by the way there was no steam coming out of his ears. Of course, he didn't look terribly happy, but then when did Vimes look happy?

He snickered at his own joke. The Commander shot him a lookbefore focusing in on the cat. He looked blank for a moment, and then his eyes widened in surprised recognition.

"You're that cat, aren't you," he said in a way that made it clear he was not asking a question. "The one Quirke wanted to boil. Bastard was right there for once."

Maurice looked suddenly shifty. "Miaow?" he tried.

"Don't bother," said Vimes wearily. "I'm the one who found you splitting the deal with the rats, remember?"

"Bugger," said Maurice, giving up all pretenses.

"Maurice knows everyone," said Moist, grinning. "And everyone knows Maurice. Right Maurice? The Amaaaazing Maurice."

The cat glared at him. Moist started snickering again.

Vimes sighed. "How did you get in here, anyway? Not you," he snapped, when Moist opened his mouth.

"I just followed your officer. He didn't seem to notice me," said Maurice, forgetting himself for a moment and looking immensely self-satisfied.

"How - oh. Detritus. Well, I guess it doesn't matter, since I'm supposed to let you out anyway, Mr. Lipwig. Miss Dearheart is waiting for you outside."

"Miss Dearheart is tired of waiting, actually," said Spike, stepping inside. "Is there something wrong, Commander?"

Vimes opened his mouth, caught the look in her eye, and ignored it, because he was Vimes. "Well, yes," he said, "I can write you a list if you'd like -"

"Would it be _relevant to the situation at hand?_"

"Some of it would. I just found your Mr. Lipwig associating with a wanted man, for one -"

"Sorry?"

"Er, wanted cat," said Vimes, and then seemed to realize how that sounded. He winced. Spike raised an eyebrow. She was really good at that, thought Moist. She ought to give wossname, Cosmo, that was it, lessons, he could do with it, haha.

"He looks like a darling wittle putty tat to me," said Spike, solemnly. "I believe I will escort my fiance home now. If," she added, "that is permissable?"

"Perfectly," said Vimes, with heavy sarcasm. He saluted them both, with mock formality, and stomped out.

She prodded him in the ribcage. "Up you get."

He groaned and rolled over. "Do I hafta?"

"Yes. Come on."

"I'm - I'm getting up, there, yes," he mumbled, and tried to stand, eventually ending up in an approximately vertical position. With added swaying. Spike snorted and took him firmly by the shoulders, by which grip she managed to successfully steer him out of the Watch House and into the street.

Maurice padded after them on velvet paws.

"Right," said Spike, as soon as the doors had closed behind them, "What was that about? Vimes wasn't drunk, surely?"

"No, he weren't. Wasn't? Weren't," said Moist. "Completely sober. Knurd, like. Liiike. Heh. Poooooooooooooooor barstard..."

"It's sad, really. Arrested twice in as many days, once for national theft and once for being drunk and disorderly? And you didn't answer my question," she said briskly. The fact that he _was _drunk and disorderly was apparently beside the point.

"Mister Vimes just doesn't like me, 'sall, 'cos I'm so good. Not my fault. But he's right. Cat. Big ol' mastermindy criminal."

"I can't think why he wouldn't, at the moment - how much _did _you drink?"

"Little bit. Little teensy bit. Maybe one cup, or, like, six."

She shook her head and dragged him back to what probably, these days, counted as home.

And the cat, curiosity satisfied, left the city, which isn't much of a resurrection, but oh well. Resurrection or no, Maurice considered fast departure to be a good thing, because it meant that Ethel-Moist never found out (or remembered) that man and cat had actually gotten drunk and maudlin together about years and heists past. There was no need to cause the poor fellow that much trauma. He retained a soft spot for his old apprentice.

And it saved himself quite a lot of mental scarring, too. As always, with Maurice, altruism was the secondary consideration.


	2. Also Some Stuff In The Middle Ish

_"...including once getting his jaw broken, which had only been fun in a no-fun-at-all kind of way."_

-- Moist von Lipwig, Going Postal

Two conmen walked into a bar…

Well. No. Let me rephrase that.

One ex-conman, now respectable banker and Postmaster General, walked into a bar. He was trailed by a concat, a plump old tom going grey at the pawtips who looked quite pleased with himself.

The conman, whose name was Moist – _don't say it _– headed determinedly for an empty stool, dropping the occasional handful of change when the crush of the crowd became too heavy and there was no open path. This cleared the area in front of him pretty well, although at this time of night it was a rather expensive habit. Eventually he reached the counter and sat down, swinging his legs idly in a way reminiscent of nothing so much as a six year old boy on a rainy afternoon.

Maurice almost stalked up to him then, but changed his mind at the last moment and stayed put, a few meters away. He, of course, had had no trouble, but then he had a set of claws and teeth at his disposal and no qualms about using them. Ethel always did have funny ideas about violence.

He watched as the man rapped the tabletop smartly with his knuckles. Watched as the barmaid, a well-built woman**(a)**, appear, club in hand and threatening comment about "smart-arses who thinks they can call me like a godsdamned slave". Watched Ethel duck the swing. He approved: clearly his reflexes, at least, had not gone to pot. Watched him give the lass a charming smile and ask for a dozen pints, please.

The night was beginning to look more and more promising, Maurice thought to himself.

The drinks arrived, in grudging – but also slightly admiring – procession**(b)**. Ethel immediately snatched the first one and drank it down in one swallow. Maurice edged closer.

Another glass, filled and emptied. Maurice was within a foot of the man's shoe, now.

A third.

"Hullo," said Maurice brightly, as Ethel was finishing his fourth and looking speculatively at the next in the row.

"Hmm?" said Ethel, fingers closing around the glass.

"Down here."

"Wha… _Maurice_?"

"In the flesh."

"What're you. Doing. Here, I mean?"

"Checking up on an old friend, o' course. Good job too, look at you mate. If I weren't here you'd be utterly sloshed right now."

"I am sloshed –" Ethel pointed out, but Maurice was already on the counter, lapping at one of the mugs.

"Here, thassmine!"

"Indulge an old friend."

Ethel subsided. He seemed a bit too drunk to catch the subtle threat. Maurice sighed; he would probably have to wait 'til later.

No one else had noticed the talking cat on bar property, it looked like, so he settled down and regarded Ethel soulfully. This had little apparent effect.

"Heyheyheyhey," the man said, with all the cheerfulness of a drunk in Stage 4, Happy Homicide. "D'you remember, that time we, mm, we went on that uh, uh, uh, date with y'know-who, wossname, Dianne?" He sipped at one of the pints, first burst of thirst apparently sated.

"Er," said Maurice, and then, "oh dear…"

**(a) Well-built in the sense that, for instance, a barrel is well-built.**

**(b) The phrase should be taken as literally as possible, because not only was the barmaid arranging them admiring, so were the drinks. Water in the Mended Drum invariably took on a life of its own.**

--

It'd been a dark and stormy night, the night when Maurice came up with the idea of winning the heart of Dianne Trubucket, daughter of the richest sheep-merchant in town. They should have taken it as an omen. They hadn't.

"Trubucket?" said Ethel, then a nineteen year old who had learned quite a lot about the world since they'd met. "The one with the square jaw and the nose like a hammer?"

"You mean it looks like a hammer hit it?" said Maurice, distracted momentarily from his Plan.

"No," said Ethel, "I mean it looks like a hammer. The front end, obviously. With the flattened knob, as it were**(a)**."

"Sure," said Maurice dismissively. He had better things to do than look at blobby human things all day. "Anyways. As I was saying. Win her heart. Win her father's money. That kind of thing."

"You don't expect me to _marry _her?" said the lad, horrified (and it took a good deal to horrify Ethel, these days).

"No, no, of course not! We just need to get into her house."

"Oh. Okay." Ethel relaxed. Slightly.

He really, really should have known better.

**(a) Moist's descriptive powers had not yet undergone the, er, fine-tuning it would acquire in his later years.**

**--**

It should have been so _simple. _

Ethel was good at what he did, after all. Maurice prided himself on being a gifted teacher, but, really, quite a bit of it was natural talent. They'd already scammed several thousands of dollars out of various gullible young women, and the lad hadn't yet reached twenty. He had a way about him, though, part charm and part innocence and part willingness to wear ridiculous moustaches at any given moment. (Maurice was starting to get a little worried about that particular habit, actually.) It had always worked in the past.

They started the next day. The lighting made Ethel's ever-indeterminately colored hair look blondish, and he'd added to his normal costume a jaunty cap with a feather in**(a)**, a small, suspiciously bristling straw-colored moustache**(b)**, and a brilliant grin. Dianne was quite taken with him the moment he bumped into her at the marketplace: it could be seen.

"I'm so sorry!" she said. "Are you all right?" She bent over to help him up.

"I'm fine," said Ethel, adding perhaps a _smidgen _too much 'gruff and macho' to his tone. Maurice held his breath, but all seemed to be well, because she replied "Oh no you're not! Look at that bruise!"

It was a very small bruise. Ethel colored. It might even have been genuine, that blush, though the bruise certainly wasn't: he'd dabbed it on with a bit of make-up only half an hour earlier. Several other customers within earshot started to titter.

"Er," he muttered, "'s nothing, just a scratch…"

"A _scratch_!" she exclaimed. "A scratch, my arse." Then she seemed to recall that she was talking to a Young Man, and added hurriedly "Pardon my Klatchian."

It was at that point that the manager came rushing in, yelling about the produce damaged in the collision, and all were forced to flee. Ethel considered it a profitable encounter over all, however, because he overheard her parting words:

"Come to my house later, I'll give you a salve for it, dear."

**(a) The leading fashion in Uberwald for young males on the move, thanks to generations of horror movies in other universes entirely.**

**(b) Which he kept and added to his now considerable collection. Maurice, it must be said, quite often considered therapy.**

--

"Y'know," said Ethel, to no one in particular, as they were walking to her house later that evening, "that woman's arse is bonier than a… a very bony thing."

"And you would know this… how?" Maurice retorted.

"What do you think? I had to bump into it!"

"It?"

Ethel glared at him.

"Okay, okay, I get it," said the cat, "you're not going any farther than need be. We just need to get in, hit her over the head, get cash, get out."

"Huh. Fine for you to say," said Ethel.

Maurice was about to respond indignantly to this particular implication when they came up to the front door of the rather grand house, which opened without even a single knock from Ethel's lifted fist.

"Why, hel_lo,_" said the monstrosity before them.

There were so many layers of horror that it was difficult to know where to start.

There was the make-up, of course. She had used some sort of thick white foundation, overlaid with extremely red lips and bright pink circles where, once upon a time, quite innocent cheeks had hung plumply from her mandibles. At some point there must have been a reasonable attempt at eyelining and mascara, but since then it had clumped and dripped in every imaginable unflattering way.

There was the hair. Clearly a wig, the chestnut, curling mass was hanging only precariously onto her skull, heavy naturally and adorned with additional weights that were tasteless but, it should be mentioned, very sparkly.

There was the nighty, which appeared to be made of a few scraps of silk and a whole lot of lace, and would have been revealing and clingy on any other person. To be fair it also clung to and revealed of Dianne Trubucket; it was just that it clung to all the wrong places and revealed all the wrong things.

But worst of it all was the perfume

It came in great, all-enveloping gusts. It penetrated and adhered to any solid surface unfortunate enough to be in its way**(a).** It smelled like rotting flowers and, er, rotting non-flowers, too.

It was, in short, the most expensive perfume in the world, _Captivation_**(b).**

"Please do come in," it – she continued.

"Yes'm," Ethel squeaked, and – at prodding by Maurice, whose battered, scarred, half-torn-off nose was impervious to even the most pungent of perfumes – edged inside, keeping as far from the source of the odor as possible in the narrow doorway.

"Are you all right, dear? The bruise isn't paining you too much?" said Dianne, voice dripping with sympathy and concern. "Here, what is your name again?"

"Charles," he managed. Maurice was just glad he'd remembered the name they'd agreed on and hadn't blurted out Ethel, which could have been distinctly disastrous.

"Well, Charles, if you could just open up your shirt a little so that I could apply the salve?" She brandished a small glass bottle of some unidentifiable greenish substance threateningly.

Too dazed by the Smell to resist, Ethel fumbled with the top button of his vest for a moment before peeling it away to reveal the culprit. Dianne, of course, made a great fuss over it, cooing and making other strange and unnatural noises as she slathered on a thick covering of goo. Ethel gave him a despairing look.

Maurice sighed. Obviously he was going to have to do this himself.

"Mrow!" he said, loudly. Dianne turned around slightly, and saw the cat. "Oh, a wittle putty tat, isn't he adora-"

That was as far as she got before he pounced.

Girl and cat went down as one screaming entity, clawing at each other in a desperate bid for freedom.

Ethel, under the impression that their victim was distracted, reached down to grab one of the sparkly, tasteless, and highly expensive hair-things.

Unfortunately, he had gravely miscalculated his would-be victim's response.

"It _bit _me!" she shrieked, coming up briefly for air – before seeing Ethel with one guilty hand stuck in her hair. "Oh – you – you –"

Finding words, even her Klatchian, inadequate, she brought her free arm (Maurice was viciously attacking the other) around. It connected with his jaw with a solid cracking noise and sent the boy sprawling backwards. He yelped like a little girl, Maurice was satisfied to note. Nevertheless, it looked like it was time to get out of here. He leaped from her shoulder towards the still-open door, and Ethel had enough sense to pick himself up and follow at high speed before she could recover enough to stand.

**(a) Moist would spend days trying to get it out of his good clothes, and the moustache carried a lingering trace of it ever after.**

**(b) Dianne had attended the Quirm School For Young Ladies. She had been several years below Sybil Ramkin, but Her Ladyship was a kind and generous gel. Probably.**

**--**

"Cheer up," said Maurice, "doc said it'll heal within a fortnight."

"Shut. Up," said Ethel, through the forcibly clenched teeth caused by a brace for a broken jaw.

"You have to admit," said Maurice, "she had a _damn _fine right hook."

He went to bed with his own scar that night, as it happened, though he liked to think that the lovely new scratches adorning his partner's arm suggested that he'd given as good as he'd got.

--

"Good times, good... times!" Ethel said happily, some twelve years later.

"_Good times_?"

"Yeah, yeah. Y'know," he confided, leaning forwards towards the cat, who promptly backed away from the approaching stink of alcohol, "the girl I'm seeing now you wouldn't believe."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. She's uh, y'know, she smokes, right?"

Maurice tried to raise his eyebrows. Since he was a cat, this was tricky, but the thought was there.

"Yeah. So. And she wears these shoes."

"Shoes?"

"Yeah. Uh. Pretty - pretty Lucy? Lucianne? Lulu? Lucratitive? Nononono. Lucretia!"

"Huh?"

"The shoes," Ethel explained patiently. "They're called Pretty Lucretia."

"Oh. Right. Of course."

"Yeah. So anyways. Uhm." He fell sideways slightly, then pulled himself back up. "Yeah. They got... they got spikes!"

"What have spikes?"

"The _shoes!_"

Maurice gave up, and had himself another gulp of liquor.

"Nonono, lissen. Them. The shoes," Ethel persisted, "the shoesies, she _spiked _someone with 'em. So. Yeah. Now I call her... _Spike._"

Maurice patted the man on the shoulder as he slumped gently backwards. "I begin to see," he said, "how you can call getting your jaw broken good times."

A/N: UNTIL NEXT TIME AHAHAHAHA.

...yeah. Maybe continued, maybe not.


End file.
